For our first return to Canada after seven months in Paris, we were greeted by a real Canadian winter! While in Paris the temperatures were around 10 to 12 degrees Celsius, we found ourselves in huge quantities of snow and cold (although close to normal) temperatures.

First stage of our trip: Abitibi. This area, situated 600 km to the north-west of Montreal, is where Suzanne was born. Follow us in our photo-reportage!

Hi: I was a nice place to grow up though it is a very small town (12,000 people) so there weren’t much to do. I am much more comfortable in bigger cities, like Toronto or Paris. I like to visit but I wouldn’t be able to live there anymore!

Hi Nathalie: I prefer Amos in the winter…no mosquitoes and it hide some of its not so good features. We didn’t feel like a foreigner at all. It was like being on our Christmas break from when we lived in Toronto. We did the same run so things were pretty similar apart from having to take a plane to get to Montreal. Though, we had more to talk about as we have had some pretty exciting experiences!

And that cathedral is quite shocking to see, not only because such buildings are incredibly rare in North America but because that architecture isn’t usually covered in snow. I thought you’d slipped a photo of Russia into the mix!

It was very cold though so not certain you would want to be in those photos for very long (between -15 & -27C!). The snow was indeed very pretty!

Yup, the cathedral is a fairly unique feature of my hometown. It was built in the middle of nowhere when very few people lived there. The original priest or the architect (can’t remember which one) had been impressed by the style and wanted to recreate it. It was a pretty ambitious project at the time for a place so sparsely populated.

P.S. I have yet to go to Russia so I couldn’t have slipped a picture in though I have seen various churches of that styles in Europe.

Beautiful pictures and lovely winter scenes of a not-often-visited part of Quebec. Thanks for sharing. I am sure you both were peppered with questions about your adventures during your visit and it must have been great to catch up with family and friends. Hope you enjoy the milder temperatures back in France.